Free data-center heat is allegedly saving a struggling public pool $24K a year

Indoor pool with lane markers

UK public pool saves £20,000 (around $24,000) a year and 25.8 tonnes of carbon footprint by heating 25m pool and kiddie pool with waste heat from start-up Deep Green’s data center expected to reduce. Data center owners have long tried to limit the effects of the heat emitted by their machines. Some find ways to submerge servers underwater or redirect waste heat to warm larger areas such as buildings and communities. UK-based Deep Green is a newcomer to the data center heat game, The amount of potential savings is underpinned by the low, low free rate of heat.

Deep Green’s paying customers are machine learning and AI companies seeking computing resources. The client can take advantage of Deep Green’s 28 kW system with high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities, as reported by Datacenter Dynamics on Tuesday. His HPC cluster at the Exmouth Leisure Center swimming pool has 12 of his 4 CPU cards, which could eventually be used for cloud his services and video rendering, said Deep Green’s CEO. , Mark Bjornsgaard told the publication. According to the BBC, the server is about the size of a washing machine.

The computer is submerged in mineral oil that captures the heat transferred to the pool water in a heat exchanger. The pool still has a gas boiler to increase the temperature of the water if required. Deep Green claims to transfer about 96% of the energy used by computers and reduce the pool’s gas heat usage by 62%. Deep Green pays his Exmouth Leisure Center for all power and set-up costs for his data center, and Exmouth Leisure Center provides free heating.

Deep Green CTO Mat Craggs told Datacenter Dynamics: He noted that this number could grow to 70 or 80% as he adds servers to the tab. Deep Green’s data center can heat a 25-meter pool to 86 degrees Fahrenheit about 60% of the time at the Exmouth Leisure Center, he reports the BBC.

The startup plans to set up data centers in seven more UK locations, with a target of 20 by 2023.

Practical application of heat recovery for data centers

Deep Green is a French Garneau and UK-based Heata says it recycles heat from its data centers to boil water for those in need. Other data centers, including those owned by IBM, Uses data center waste heat for years. There is also a company in the US that sells waste heat from data centers, and the region is already using data center heat for insulation.be careful iLast year, technology giant Microsoft announced plans to supply parts of Finland with waste heat from a data center it is building.

However, given the sheer number of data centers around the world using large amounts of energy, data center heat redistribution is still a niche market. One reason is that data center companies face costs and challenges in distributing heat, such as the cost of utilizing local district heating systems (which varies by country). Depending on the type of technology used, heat recycling can also be more difficult. Oslo-based IT company Cloud&Heat told Datacenter Dynamics last year.

As Bloomberg reported, Germany began pondering the idea of ​​requesting data centers to provide heat to nearby homes earlier this year, but it has been challenged by a lack of interest from those looking to receive it. Essentially, waste heat is not hot enough by itself, requiring a heat pump with its own economic and power costs.

“Data center operators are almost always ready and willing to release the waste heat. , Ralph Hintemann, senior researcher at data center lobby group Borderstep, told Bloomberg.

Residents of Germany’s 1,300-unit residential district, which will open in mid-2025, will have to accept at least some of the heat from nearby server farms. Bloomberg reports that the carbon footprint is equivalent to removing 200 cars by burning them. engine from the road. However, this project is still a work in progress and is only feasible due to the very close physical proximity (0.3 miles / 500 m) of our data center, Telehouse Deutschland GmbH, to the following communities:

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